When the Day Falls Apart Before It Starts

Learning to Be Kind to Myself

I've been doing this thing where I'm trying to build a habit because some habits can be really good, some can be really bad. It depends on what the habit is, of course.

And my habit that I'm trying to instill in myself is to get up between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning, which is pretty normal for me anyway. Not that difficult. Come down to my office, do some writing, with the key being my Internet is turned off so I can't start surfing social media and news and whatever else. Because once I start that, I have no self-discipline. Once I go online, that's it. I lose all focus and all concentration.

So, come in, do some work. And then the first time I log in is right now, when I come in and check in with you guys, for five or ten minutes. Then I wrap this up, go upstairs, get my kid ready for school and get her out the door, then come back down, turn my Internet back off again, and keep working until 12.

Well, that's not how it worked out today.

I slept for about two hours last night and then woke up not feeling really great. Came downstairs, puttered around a little bit, and finally went to fall asleep on the couch, which is not so bad. The couch is really comfortable.

(The problem is then when I wake up, my back is like, “Oh really? You think so, huh, sport? All right, how old are you again?” So now I gotta do extra stretching and do all of my old-man stuff to make sure that I don't lock up at some point this afternoon.)

But I got up and it was late, and I wrote half a page or something like that on Breaking Character. It's not how I wanted my day to go, but that's how it ended up. And then I ended up going online because, oh, I'm just gonna check a couple things. And sure enough, that just threw me down the rabbit hole and made me really, really angry and upset at the state of the world—which I will not get into here, for no other reason other than that's not the space I want to create for you.

(There are plenty of other spaces for that. You're more than welcome to go see them. I know I do. But I don't want to do it here.)

In any case, this habit that I'm trying to establish—it's like, I don't know if I've ever gone a week with a new thing that I've been trying to establish. Whether that was exercise or writing or anything. I just lose focus and I can't keep it up for more than, like, five days. I think five days is probably my max.

And so the best thing to do, that I would recommend—and that I'm trying to recommend to myself right now—is instead of getting upset about it and saying, fuck it, the whole day is ruined, I'm just gonna do this and watch movies or play Minecraft or whatever it is you do.

Instead of that, saying: okay, where's a good reset?

I have my day kind of blocked, roped off into three or four separate blocks of time. And this is my first block right now, as I speak. This is block number one—or maybe two, depending on how you want to break it up. But then I've got block two, block three, block four still coming up. There's nothing wrong with those blocks. Those things are going fine as far as I can tell.

So stop, reset, try to pick up from where I left off, and keep going from there. That's the plan. And then tomorrow, try again.

It's only a failure if you don't keep giving it a shot, you know? And it's not easy. It's not. I'm not saying this from a position of wild success. I'm saying it because I need to hear myself say it.

The perfect schedule doesn't exist. Things are going to go wrong and I've just got to roll with it and pick up from where I left off as soon as possible.

Also, right now, in this period of global history, it's really hard to focus. It's really, really hard to focus on the day-to-day stuff. Particularly if, like me, you are already prone to catastrophizing and Mr. Worst Case Scenario—which I have a black belt in.

So, today's not starting the way I wanted it to. Okay. What can I control? I can control that I still logged in to write this. I still opened my Breaking Character document to write a few sentences. That's all it was, but I moved the ball a little bit.

I can still control getting breakfast ready for my kid and making sure she gets to the bus stop and doing the other things that I need to do this morning before I go off and do the other stuff that's on my list to do today. Those little steps.

I will be able to go to bed tonight and hopefully sleep, knowing that, hey, I did the best I could with the situation I was given—with situations beyond my control. Cool. And that's a win.

And I don't know about you, but I really need to start talking myself up when it comes to that. I really need to hear myself say those good and supportive and positive things about myself and my choices because I don't normally do that—and that hasn't helped.

May as well try the other way. And you can call them affirmations, you can call them whatever the fuck you want. I don't give a shit. But I need to do it.

After many years of struggling with it, I'm finally starting to learn and accept that I need to hear myself say these things about myself. And it does actually help.

So while on the one hand I really need to keep working hard on my self-discipline and my focus, on the other hand, I also need to continue working on giving myself a break when a break is called for—particularly when there's a situation outside of my control.

So, anyway, that's where I am today. I hope that's helpful for somebody.

Good luck today and take care of yourself. Okay? I'll see you later.

~ Tom